Leftist ideology has always been a bad idea. That fact is growing increasingly obvious and painfully blatant. It’s remarkable that even in the short 4 years that I’ve been writing this blog, the faulty assumptions and immorality of progressivism have grown measurably more difficult to defend. Charles Murray’s book Coming Apart – The State of White America 1960-2010 (2012) is an example of an ongoing anti-Leftist thought trajectory.

Murray contrasts the American Project against the “advanced European welfare State”. His indictment of the European model and view of the intellectual and moral superiority of the American Project is a minority position, for now, but one that I very much share. Our view is derisively attacked by mainstream intellectuals – but that is changing. Murray writes that the restrictions the European model imposes on freedom are substantial, but, in return, Europeans supposedly get economic security. As we’ve seen here week after week – that’s a bad trade. The security (assuming they get it – which is dubious) – is the security of the barracks.

(Remember my 1/17/17 post of F. A. Hayek quoting Ben Franklin?).

The view of life that has taken root in Western Europe is, frankly, inferior to our American values. Murray writes; European thinking goes something like this: “The purpose of life is to while away the time between birth and death as pleasantly as possible, and the purpose of government is to make it as easy as possible to while away the time as pleasantly as possible.” The alternative to this lazy, morally inferior worldview is to acknowledge there is so much more to life than that, which gives us a higher, more transcendent purpose. Time should be spent doing important things – raising a family, supporting yourself, being a good friend and a good neighbor, learning what you can do well and then doing it as well as you possibly can.

Let’s spend some War Chest time reinforcing the reasons why Murray’s minority view is so right and why the progressive agenda is so wrong.